Dan Brown's Angels & Demons

Cafe Society
#1

Who else has read this book? What did you think of it?

He’s also the author of The Da Vinci Code and Digital Fortress.

This is officially the last book I will read by him. All the stories seem exactly the same. Just plug in a different secret organization, with a different authoritative but possibly crazy boss. :rolleyes:

Angels & Demons really reached the limit when

Langdon survived jumping out of a helicopter without a parachute! Then the camerlengo managed to do it too, but they never really explain how. Puh Leeze! Oh, and don’t get me started about his apparant hatred for the Catholic Church.

#2

I checked this one out of the library, under the impression that it was an art history mystery. I read it right after giving birth to DangerBaby, so it was amusing brainless reading matter–if you define ‘amusing’ as ‘funny, but painful, in a B-movie kinda way.’

I got a lot of fun out of reading passages out loud to DangerDad and watching his head explode.

Yeah, it was terrible. I’m never reading anything by him again (I did read The DaVinci Code finally, just because I’m a librarian and supposed to keep up with things, and people kept asking me about it, and now I can authoritatively tell them it was awful!).

#3

This was a boon pressed on me by a co-worker who knows I love to read, and was sure I’d enjoy it. I didn’t have the heart to give it the criticism I thought it deserved.

It was just a bad read, plain and simple-- shallow, somewhat inept, predictable and just all-around irritating. Reading it was like doing math homework: struggling to force yourself to finish it though you have a hundred things you’d rather be doing.

#4

A work colleague has been recommending *Angels and Demons * to me. I don’t want to read it. I read *The Da Vinci Code * (at the same colleague’s insistence) and I though that was rubbish.

#5

I thought it was OK. Certainly an easy read. Kind of the literary equivalent of a dumb action movie sequel.

I’m vaguely interested in his next book, which apparently will be something about the Freemasons society. I’ll wait to read some (doper) reviews before I pick it up though. :wink:

#6

A truly hideous book. I read it because the DaVinci Code, while not good, was at least diverting. Bad move.

Sua

#7

I work in a bookstore, and people keep buying his damn books, and telling me how great they are… bleh. From the blurbs on the back covers they look terrible. Actually had one woman tell me The DaVinci Code was a life-changing experience, and everyone ought to read it. :rolleyes:

#8

I actually liked Angels and Demons more than DaVinci Code but that was because I read A&D first. I think I had my fill of his writing style by the time I read DVC.
Enright3:

I think you missed the part where the camerlengo had a parachute in the helicopter.

#9

I read Angels and Demons after The Da Vinci Code, and liked A&D better, but that’s not saying a whole lot. I read A&D while I was on a flight back from England. It’s a good brainless thriller to read when you’re on a plane and really tired, but I won’t say much else for it.

#10

I liked 'em. I mean, they weren’t the best. books. ever., but they were better than a lot of other crap I’ve read, too. I don’t know if that necessarily qualifies as any kind of endorsement. Then again, I do think The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is the most important book ever written in any language, and also that Mitch Albom is a boring, stupid, talentless hack, so there you go.

#11

I read Da Vinci Code at the behest of a coworker (she lent me her copy) last year, and found it entertaining.

I read Angels and Demons a couple of months ago and found it ludicrous. Buh-bye, Dan Brown.

#12

I thought both books were great fun. Of course, I went about reading them with the view that they were nothing but pseudo-intellectual cotton candy – and that’s exactly what they turned out to be. I think the venom that is unleashed by so many upon reading these books has less to do with their merits (or lack thereof) as fiction, and more to do with their having been embraced as “truth” by the unenlightened and all-too-gullible masses.

That being said, I found Angels & Demons in particular to be an enjoyable little rollercoaster of a novel. The semester I spent in Rome allowed me to guess most of the clues ahead of time, which, to me, only added to the fun. Sure, the plot is preposterous. Sure, the characters are little more than cardboard cutouts. Sure, both books follow virtually identical patterns. So what? They made for a nice interlibrum change of pace as I finished up Masters of Rome and prepared to embark upon the Master and Commander series.

#13

I liked Dan Brown’s books much better when Robert Anton Wilson and Umberto Eco were writing them.

(For the record, I haven’t finished any of Brown’s books. I read the first few chapters of DvC and A&D and then I stopped, in much the same way I imagine I would remember to stop shoving my arm into the garbage disposal long before I reached the shoulder.)

#14

I read A&D before reading DVC, and I regret it. The stock characters and situations made DVC completely predictable. I enjoyed the descriptions of the art, just cuz I’m an art geek, but that was about it. Think I’ll give his other books a miss.

#15

Technically, it’s true. Before I read it, I was a person who hadn’t read The DaVinci Code. That is no longer true - I have changed and become one who HAS read it.

Granted, the change wasn’t huge, but …

#16

I posted a reply in another DVC thread a few days ago and didn’t get much feedback, but I basically said I didn’t understand all the negative reaction to DVC, or the feeling from many other posters that you are somehow a moron if you enjoyed it.

I whole-heartedly agree that Brown’s writing style leaves alot to be desired, and it was downright grating at times, but I still found the whole premise of the story fascinating. It was one of the things that prompted me to read more books on early Christianity, because, yes, it is moronic to get your religious philosophy from a novel. I knew right away that he was wrong about certain things, (the Council of Nicea) but dead right about others (the demonization and incorporation of the Pagan symbols into Christianity).

For sure, novels are largely meant to entertain, but if they spark curiosity and pique the interest on a certain subject, then I wouldn’t be so quick to throw out the baby with the bath water. Just because Gone With the Wind is a work of fiction doesn’t mean the Civil War didn’t happen.

I am a College Instructor in the deep South, and I am only recently, after sitting in church for all of my 40 years, finding out that such things as the Nag Hammadi texts and the Mary Magdelene Cult even exist. If anything, Dan Brown’s book, with all it’s limitations, is getting alot of people in my circle talking about many things they never would have otherwise. I find it more refreshing than you can believe.

I haven’t read A&D, because DVC didn’t make me want to read anything else by Dan Brown, it just made me want to read more about the evolution of western religion. There are many other authors that I think could be writing better books on the same subjects.

#17

I thought the same thing. It’s like Foucault’s Pendulum for Dummies

#18

Nope, Bean Counter, I didn’t miss that… What I missed was I thought the camerlengo jumped out of the helcopter with the ‘package’. I just re-read it, and now I realize he left it in the helicopter. Either way you gotta admit, using a tarp as a parachute? That doesn’t sound too plausible.

#19

I need to learn to do that. To the best of my memory, there’s only one book that I started to read, but just couldn’t finish. That was Mystic River. As it turns out, the movie wasn’t too bad. The book was just way too slow for me.

#20

One of the most aggravating things to me about Dan Brown’s style of writing? It seems like at the end of every one of the 130+ chapters should end with that music when a drama almost reveals a killer, and then cuts to a commercial. Bum da BUMMMM!!! It’s like he’s stopping mid paragraph as a foreshadow into the next chapter. Oh, and the next chapter is only three paragraphs long. :rolleyes:

I’m stunned by how many people think The DvC is historical. Hysterical is more like it! (snort!) I’m starting to believe that people are thinking the same thing about A&D. Boy, people love a good conspiracy.

e3